


scream my lungs

by orphan_account



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Free Verse, Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:51:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3345917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Celaena Sardothien has too many names and they stack up like bricks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. occupational

**Author's Note:**

> These are just drabble pieces to write whenever the feeling hits me.

_Champion._

It is whispered in a hiss inside the catacombs in her head. _Champion,_ uttered in a demon's voice. She feels the word like a coarse tongue dragging against her skin, unwanted. Sandpaper scraping slowly across her skin, down her body, up her body, tearing away.

_Champion._

She has never wanted to be a blank face, a meaningless face, more.  
  


* * *

 

_Assassin._

She used to be proud of it, her title. The best throat-slicer, quietest night-crawler, deadly, deadly. The best at murdering for money in a realm at war. She broke her own bones several times over to get it, but it was a black-tar title, choking and burning as it blinded you.

_Assassin._

She wears the scars of it.

 

* * *

 

_Slave._

Chattel, property, fancy words applied to torn flesh and blood. Her eyes are unfocused and there is something like howling in the outpouring of adrenaline.

There's not much thought to being a slave in the mines: darkness, the lamps, pale shivers of light on dirty skin. Arms, muscles clench, swing a pickaxe and flinch as dust flies into your eyes.

She watches through the corners of her eyes, a mask of false placidity. the guards wear armor of red-and-gold, keep their twitchy hands on the handles of their blades, and she waits. she _waits,_ one pale viper hiding in coal dust.

_Slave._

The word tastes of her own blood, and she swears by the copper on her lips she will burn.


	2. nom de plume

She is called _C-e-l-a-e-n-a_ by a man with fox eyes and clever hands. The name sticks in her throat at first, ( _this is not my name, not the name my parents gave me_ ), but it is a silken name, sliding around her mouth till the taste of it is bearable. Celaena is a girl with bloody knuckles and a vain head, and she survives this way.

Mostly.  
  


* * *

 

Lady Lillian Gordaina is a jewel-thief, soft skin, sharp eyes. She does not have a back of knotted whip scars, and most certainly has _not_ had a hard life.

Nehemia sees, though.

Lady Lillian is a story written in black ink in a black page in a book of other selves: her painted face screams _not real, not real, these smiles are the definition of false._ She wears the gowns well enough, and her maid pins her pale hair prettily, she bows low and is porcelain doll perfection. But, her mouth runs. Her tongue slips away from her in jaunty cants, witty mockery of these palace games. She is the secrets she whispers beneath her breath, and Nehemia sees fire in those strangely bright eyes.

 


End file.
